Former American vice president, and global warming guru, Al Gore has sold his television network, Current TV, to Al Jazeera, owned by oil-rich Qatar. Chris Procaylo/QMI AGENCY FILES

Al Gore, the guru of global warming, has always behaved like a hypocrite.

One who preaches austerity for everyone else to save the planet, while he jets around the world, living in the lap of luxury, leaving a carbon footprint in his wake that would choke an elephant.

But Gore's latest carbon caper -- selling his struggling Current TV to Al Jazeera for a cool, personal profit of a reported $100 million -- takes the cake.

That's because Al Jazeera, which paid $500 million in total for Current, is funded by the oil and natural gas-rich Arab emirate of Qatar.

The spectacle of Gore selling out to the fossil fuel interests he claims are destroying the planet, even has the normally docile U.S. media on his case.

Gore is now on tour promoting his latest book, The Future -- Six Drivers of Global Change, in which he warns that:

"Virtually every news and political commentary program on television is sponsored in part by oil, coal and gas companies -- not just during campaign seasons but all the time, year in and year out -- with messages designed to soothe and reassure the audience that everything is fine, the global environment is not threatened."

Juxtaposing that with Gore's sell-out to these same fossil fuel interests has proven to be too much even for the American media -- who have spent years uncritically covering Gore's save-the-planet crusade.